Fostering Innovation and Methodology through Experiential Learning for Data Structures

*Corresponding Author: K. Anitha Kumari Email: kak.it@psgtech.ac.in Abstract: For real-life work environment, developing employability skills by the students’ community is indispensable and need of the hour. Laboratories associated with courses cultivate the ability of students to think independently and promote employability skills through experiential learning. Data structures are one such predominant course in IT/CSE domain to enhance the skill set of students for Placements/Higher studies. It provides opportunity for students to devise algorithms efficiently in an optimal manner by solving challenging problems easily thereby gaining confidence for attending placements. The purpose of this paper is to foster innovation by exploration in data structures course through experiential learning by providing coding based challenging questions as tutorials, assignment presentations and as activities during laboratory sessions and online classes are to be conducted as an essential one in the future learning perspective. Findings conclude that the experiential learning foster student’s abilities in solving the problem and thereby gaining confidence during e-learning and placement activities and the grading process are to be updated through centralized servers to the maximum extend and accuracy are to be maintained.


Introduction
Basically, student community follows the traditional way of learning and executing the programs by following a specific set of defined instructions. However, research purports that there is a profound advances in learning through experience process is required for the betterment of the learning [1]. Nowadays experiential learning is expanding its role in academic institutions to enhance the knowledge and to develop the student's skillset. It is neither a basic action, nor an ultra-sensitive reproduction. It involves solving a highly challenging problem with one's own critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This profound involvement creates better retention of new thoughts [2]. Rather than memorizing the concepts and replicating, activity based experiential learning is considered as a wise choice to learn and understand the concepts clearly. The activities are planned to involve students in higher order reasoning practices or procedures when open challenging problems are provided [3]. As a result, students pay more attention and gain more insight about the problem that is sustained for a longer period of time. Educators plays a crucial role in engaging the students in open ended challenging problems. Curriculum based activity based questions or projects are highly recommended in this paper to improve the student's performance in all aspects. The course considered for investigation of experiential learning is Data Structures, as it is undoubtedly most vital course for CSE/IT placements in the current and future scenario.
This paper is constructed in such a way to reflect the voice and thought of teachers, students and the progressed mode of investigation carried out as activities that leads to improve the involvement of students in academics in a healthier manner and practice in their regular day to day life in an efficient way. Section 2 performs a review for activity based learning methods and concerns of stakeholders involved in the experiential process, section 3 elaborates the innovative experiential learning procedures and components investigated for data structures course and its applicability section 4 explores the case study and section 5 concludes the research paper.

Literature Review 2.1. Hypothesis
The literature demonstrates that activity based teaching and learning, highly focused methods of instruction seem increasingly successful in improving students' performance with the support of stakeholder.

Research Site
Case 1: A paper by Pereira J.A. et al [4] studies the impact of using multimedia technology to teach anatomy classes. A research was conducted by them with two sets of students from a class. The first group of students was exposed to only theoretical lectures, whereas the second group of students was exposed to both theory and videos related to anatomy. Findings conclude that the students who were exposed to video clips performed well in the exams rather than the other set of students.

Case 5:
According to a study conducted by Egilmez [8], in this study, the researchers focused on investigating the learning effectiveness of an online ethics module developed for and implemented in a senior year Engineering Ethics Seminar course. The module consisted of three pillars: code of ethics, case studies, and methods for applying ethical reasoning. Each pillar requires the student to take a quiz consisting of 4 to 7 questions, and a final 10 question quiz at completion of the module. In-class activities and assignments complement the module. The research team conducted a two-semester assessment on learning effectiveness of the online ethics module with a sample of 41 engineering students from well-represented diverse majors, self-identification and racial/ethnic backgrounds compared to the enrollment population. Results indicate that the proposed online module positively impacted the students' proficiency in knowledge of ethics and ethical reasoning in terms of students' perception of improved confidence and the instructor's assessment.

Challenges:
In the literature carried out in the contribution of other stakeholders to improve the performance of students, the author discusses few major challenges facing by India and steps taken by the government with regard to the problem. Few of the issues listed by the author are: Inadequate infrastructure, less exposure to good research, less number of industry-university tie-ups [9]. Also a recent article by The New Times newspaper [10], an English teacher named Aminadhad Niyoshunti, based on the country Rwanda, suggests that the parental guidance is also required in shaping the behavior of the student.

Solutions:
In the open-ended style, the problem can be approached with multiple ways to attain the efficient solution and there is no most ideal method to put in practice [11]. Henceforth, the students finds complete independence in approaching and exploring the problem in their own drive and innovation [12,13]. Experiential mode of learning enhances the learning capacity, confidence, creativeness of students and make them industry prepared [14]. Also, it provides a high level of spirit to work like a practiced professional [15]. Hence, the literature emphasizes that experiential learning improves the student's confidence, performance and involvement drastically.

Methodology 3.1. Research Design
The course considered for investigation in this paper is data structures as it plays a significant role in Information technology domain placements. The proposed methodology describes the activity based experiential learning carried out in the laboratory and in each and every component of the course. The implementation model, overall impact on students' performance and learning experiences also elaborated in this study. As a part of B.Tech-IT curriculum of PSG College of Technology to strengthen the students' ability in developing and analyzing algorithm efficiently, five courses are included, namely, Data Structures, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Data Structures Laboratory, Advanced Data Structures and Advanced Data Structures Laboratory. These courses promise in-depth coverage towards Placement preparation/Higher Studies from the second year onwards of student's candidacy.
As a part of these courses, apart from teaching the topics as per syllabus, Tutorial questions are given in the class based on recent GATE Exam question papers and from frequently asked placement questions from various forums. For assignment presentations, coding based challenging questions from HackerRank, CodeChef, GeeksforGeeks, HackerEarth and UPSC are given and the students are advised to come up with multiple independent solutions/methodologies for the same problem by ascertaining the time and space complexity of the program/problem/application. Inherently the students are able to get a clear insight to apply different strategies for the same program/problem/application and analyzing the same. By comparing various methods for the same problem, students are able to approach the same problem in multiple ways to identify the optimal (best) solution as an outcome for this research study. Rubrics also adopted to avoid large variations in the assessment procedure.
During laboratory sessions, placement based questions related to the activity/exercise are given as practice questions for implementation. As an outcome, in-depth knowledge is assured for the respective activity/exercise. To emphasize this innovative pedagogy, few lab tests/Department placement training sessions are conducted in HackerRank as an execution environment to make the K. Anitha Kumari, L. Nanda Gopal, R.Padmashani Fostering Innovation and Methodology through Experiential Learning for Data Structures. International Journal of Education, Science, Technology and Engineering, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 94-103, Dec. 2020. DOI: 10.36079/lamintang.ijeste-0302.176 97 students familiar with the environment that benefit them during their placements. Students are ranked based on the Cumulative score obtained in the components, namely, Tutorials, Assignment Presentation and Department Placement Training Sessions and appreciated during the IT Association Award Ceremony to motivate the young minds. Students show a lot of interest in developing the optimal solution for contemporary interdisciplinary applications/real world problems with greater independence that leads as a way to Project-based laboratory. Also, while solving the problem as a group, teamwork skills and coordination skills are enhanced among the students and able to manage the competitive and stressful environments.

Findings
A detailed comparison and benefits of experiential learning vs. traditional learning is presented in Table 1. and 70 students were chosen for a case study in 2019/2020. High level challenging questions was posted to students during laboratory sessions and as tutorial as a trial. Prior to the contest, students were briefed about the working in the environment. A detailed note on solving challenges/problems in the practiced environment is demonstrated. Pictorial representation of the contest statistics is shown in Figure 1.  The contest is conducted on the HackerRank platform for highly challenging questions where all possible test cases and restrictions are added and given as input. Students are highly prepared and eagerly participated in the contest for gaining an experiential mode of learning. Lecturers are not required, but initially present to facilitate the students.
From student's side, a complete independence is provided in selecting the programming language for execution. A systematic way of executing the contest was discussed with students with 4 hours onlab session initially and dropped to 3hours on-lab session later.
Scores obtained after successfully submitting the code are encountered as their component marks for data structure course. The scores obtained by the students are shown in Figure 2. As the score analysis is a versatile tool to measure the efficiency of the students, it is considered as a metric in our study to measure the strength and weakness of students. Out of 42 students attended the contest, 39 students successfully submitted the code.
From Figure 4, our analysis revealed that, 3 students completed the programs in an exceptional manner by providing an effective solution satisfying all test cases. 30 students are very likely to perform well and the analysis discloses that high/extra attention required for 6 students. It's quite a remarkable result that facilitates to identify the position of students. This acts as an evidence that students' participation in experiential learning facilitates to improve their performance in a better manner by knowing where they are standing in than the traditional way of learning. In summary, our findings emphasize that experiential learning enhances students analyzing skills and paves way for improvement in the academics.

T-Test
It is used for comparing two groups based on their mean scores-test is based on t-distribution and is considered an appropriate test for judging the significance of a sample mean or for judging the significance of difference between the means of two samples in case of small samples when population variance is not known.
In case of two samples are related paired t-test for judging the significance of the mean of difference between the two related samples.

Null Hypothesis
There is no significant difference between experimental learning and traditional learning in the various rating given by the respondents.

Group Statistics
Group statistics are presented in Table 2 and Table 3.

Interpretation
Since SIG value is less than 0.05, for Deriving execution model, designing multiple solutions for a problem, identifying the optimal (best) solution, Assurance of in-depth knowledge Creativity & analyzing skills Exploration & interpretation skills, Gaining motivation & self-confidence null hypothesis is rejected. Therefore there is rating difference in all the parameters among Experiential Learning and Traditional Learning, From the T test we can conclude that Experiential Learning is better and optimal when compared to Traditional Learning.

Conclusion
As an inference, this restructured mode of learning for the courses Data Structures, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Data Structures Laboratory, Advanced Data Structures and Advanced Data Structures Laboratory results in stimulating the students' creativity, analyzing skills, exploration skills, interpretation skills and thereby gaining motivation and self-confidence. With high level of confidence, designing efficient (best) solution during interviews becomes reality and thereby results in the continued growth of the department and institution this also is confirmed by the statistical Ttest.